Music » Under Dutch Skies | under dutch skies

Led Zep

Jan 142013

It’s snowing outside. The NS has changed the train schedules because they just can’t deal with the tiniest amount of snow and ice. Therefore, I’m staying in tonight instead of going to Amsterdam to knit with my knitting buds.

DB sat down on the couch, flipped open his laptop and proceeded to play the Kennedy Honors Tribute to Led Zeppelin that was originally aired on December 26, 2012. This was definitely better than going out into the cold.

If you are any kind of rock music fan you really should watch this. Led Zep, as Jack Black states, is the best rock ‘n roll band ever. Every rock band since owes them a debt for their genius that lead the way.

During this tribute, others came on stage and performed Led Zeppelin songs, which only showed how incredible the band was. No one can match that sound, that power, that hit you in your gut music. During the last song (I won’t tell you what it was – you go watch it) Robert Plant got tears in his eyes and had to wipe them away. It was really touching. A short, but sweet, event.

If you watch the video you’ll see why I pulled out this photo and posted it here. It’s one I took at Pukkelpop in 2009 of Them Crooked Vultures featuring Dave Grohl on drums and John Paul Jones on guitar. Dave Grohl is an animal on drums. I don’t think he should ever do anything else. This photo was actually stolen by a music e-mag and no matter that I asked them to take it down, it’s still on their site. Ah well.

The last time we listened to Led Zep was on Christmas morning. I bought DB “Celebration Day” for Christmas. When was the last time you listened to Led Zep? Go on, do it now.

TodaysArt Festival

art, music, photography No Responses »

Sep 252012

This past weekend we went to the TodaysArt festival in den Haag. It’s a festival full of music, sculpture, video, film, dance and more I’m sure. We only saw a small fraction of it.

Friday late afternoon we showed up and wandered into the City Hall Atrium. We watched a team of people put finishing touches on the Landscape:

And watched Wolfgang prepare for his show later that evening as Mohn.

Unfortunately Mohn would be playing very late Friday night, past our bedtime, so I was really happy to get to hear a little of their music while they set up.

After we had some dinner we headed to the Lucent Danstheater and listened to “Music for Solaris”.

The music was played by the two composers, Ben Frost and Daniel Bjarnason and a small orchestra from Poland. In the background a video played, using film from a movie adaptation and other manipulations. It was often beautiful and surprising, very moody and captivating music. My only criticism is that it went on just a little too long and in the end didn’t seem to have a connection between video and music. The video ran out of steam and showed colored screens until the end of the music. The actual end of the piece was lovely the way they dropped away to silence, but they should have done it 10 minutes earlier.

After that we went back to the City Hall Atrium to see that the lights had been set and everything looked very different. Also, on the stage was “Inneract”, another music/video concert, this time with a harp player and two keyboard/electronics players. Here are some photos of the scene there.

Outside, in the Spuiplein, “The Vortex” was alive with music and lights. It’s made of garbage that had been gathered from people in den Haag (The Hague in English).

Saturday we went back and watched the film “Outliers Vol. 1: Iceland”. It was basically part documentary and part art film about 7 artists who went to Iceland to take photos and film and sound and create something from that. It was so beautiful! The country is beautiful and the images and sounds and music they made is also beautiful. I really do have to go there. Especially when the seasons are changing and there’s a chance of seeing lights in the sky.

We didn’t do much else Saturday at the festival because I was coming down with the flu. By the time the movie was over I was already feverish. We ate, then came home on the train. I felt bad because there was still so much to see. Oh well. Next year.

The train home:

(All photos taken with Nikon D5100 and 50mm 1.8 manual focus lens (thanks Mom!), no photoshop done anywhere.)

Into The Great Wide Open

entertainment, music, nature, photography 1 Response »

Sep 132012

We spent the last weekend, actually a 4 day weekend, on Vlieland, the second of the chain of islands at the top end of the Netherlands. This last weekend was the Into The Great Wide Open festival.

We drove to Harlingen, over the Afsluitdijk.

We took a boat across the Waddenzee to Vlieland.

We set up our tent at Lange Paal campground.

Luckily there are small trucks that carry all your stuff from Harlingen to the campground. You are not allowed to take a car onto the island and everyone rents bikes to get around the island. Here’s what camping looks like on Vlieland.

After we got our tent set up we hopped on our bikes and headed to the festival grounds. Just like everyone else!

The festival officially started Friday afternoon, which is when we got there, but we heard that there were some unofficial, impromptu, gatherings and performances on Thursday night when people started to arrive.

There are 3 main areas where bands/musicians are playing, plus other areas where you can find art and activities (especially for kids). The sports field is where the main stage was located, along with loads of food stands and a tiny ferris wheel and merchandise sales (very minimal). A short walk from there was the Buiten (outside) stage which was set in the woods and was cozy and small. Then, a bike ride away, up the hill near the lighthouse, was another small stage, the Vuurbuitsduin.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from the weekend:

Whole pigs being roasted on a spit:

Kids running around collecting glasses. They got 1 munt (2.50 euros) for every 20 glasses they returned. The glasses were washed and reused all weekend. These kids were tenacious!

It’s definitely a kid-friendly festival. There were lots of things for them to do (besides collect glasses), such as “make your own poffertjes” (little pancakes). There was also a place for them to make their own pizza.

Friday night we walked down to the beach.

And watched the sun set.

There was an art event on the beach earlier, but we missed it. I did get a really nice photo of the piano though.

I love that photo! It reminds me of Neil Young’s “On The Beach”.

We also went to the Vuurboetsduin stage late Friday night. We didn’t like the music, but the stage and the setting was super.

Saturday afternoon was also spent on the hill, now in brilliant sunshine.

By the time Adrian Young took the stage, the place was packed. Adrian and his band were great, and the band stay around after their set and mingled with the crowd, signing records and chatting. It’s that kind of festival.

Back at the sport field and the main stage, things were heating up (or “hotting up” as the English say), with Alt-J:

And Balthazar (we are big fans of Balthazar):

And sake tasting (3 glasses per tasting with a nice explanation from the seller about each type of sake):

This photo was taken Sunday morning, at the Buiten stage, around 11:00 in the morning. It was beautiful, sunny, in the trees, sitting on the forest floor drinking coffee and listening to interviews and music. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday morning!

Anne Soldaat being interviewed. He sang for us afterwards.

Back to the main stage late in the afternoon and Dio was whipping the crowd into a frenzy.

Now there were turkeys on the spit:

And the sun was still shining. How lucky were we!

Oh! I forgot to mention that we also spent some time hanging out in the sun on the dike that runs along the south side of the island.

You could see tall ships off in the distance.

And walking down from the lighthouse you could see the boats stuck in the mud of low tide.

The festival ended Sunday early evening and we made it an early evening ourselves. I think we were laying in our sleeping bags before 10:00pm! We were beat. Monday morning we broke camp and loaded our stuff into the truck at the campground (after a last minute panicked search for bike lock keys stuffed into a backpack already loaded onto the truck! ok- my fault) and biked back to the harbor. We returned the bikes and waited in the drizzling weather for our boat. Somehow the weather had been beautiful all weekend and then started to rain the minute we left. Talk about timing.

I haven’t talked much about music in this blog post, and music is the whole point of this festival. Clearly from my photos I think it’s about a whole lot more than the music!

My highlights of the weekend: the weather, Vlieland itself – GORGEOUS, Sunday morning music and forest setting, and the great company (DB, K & P) and the festival organization in general – oh and real flush toilets! Food highlights: Vietnamese, apple tarts, roasted pig and sake tasting. Music highlights: Janne Schra, Balthazar, Alt-J, Dirty Beaches (a little story about THAT coming up). The negatives? Hmmm, hard to find negatives. The food we had Sunday (old chicken and corn that wasn’t edible). That’s about it.

The festival is limited to 5,000 tickets and they plan to keep it that way. We were lucky to get tickets. You can only buy them online, starting at a certain date and time and they sold out within minutes. Having a festival on Vlieland forces them to keep it small. The island can only accommodate 8,000 people in total, including people who live there year round (about 1,100). I really hope we can score tickets again next year. I wouldn’t miss it!

OK, the story about Dirty Beaches. They (a 3 person band) were playing at the small (tiny) stage across the field from the main stage. They are from Toronto. They play loud grating music that isn’t to everyone’s taste. The singer looked like an Eskimo and seemed just a little crazy. At the end of the short set he jumped off the stage and ran around hugging people in a manic fashion. He wrapped one arm around DB and another arm around someone else and dragged them back and forth through the crowd. Someone shouted “til hem op!” (lift him up) and they crowd surfed him around. Finally he came to the ground and ended the set on stage. It was during that meelee that DB’s sunglasses went flying, never to be seen again. His good sunglasses that he bought in Chico. Oh well. It was funny and fun and we are now fans.

Here is a flickr set of my photos from the weekend. I could really write up a story about each photo, but it would be too long and become boring. You had to be there.

Old Turf and Music Weekend

Amsterdam, music, sports No Responses »

May 272012

This morning we drove to Sloterplas, in West Amsterdam, for our Sunday run. It’s a 6km loop around a small lake and most of the running route looks like the above – nice trees and park setting. This is my old running turf. I just did a search of my blog on “Sloterplas” and am reminded that the first time I ran here was May 11, 2008. Four years ago almost to the day. Funny. In my mind I thought it was actually a year earlier than that. Time plays tricks on the mind often.

When we lived in Amsterdam and I ran here I would listen to Brenda Dayne. Today I listened to Science Friday. It makes the time and the running just fly by (again, a trick of time). They talked about an extinct giant turtle the size of a Smart car, and why humans are omnivorous, and working towards a commercially available tomato that actually tastes good. Science Friday is always interesting.

There were a lot of joggers making their way around the lake today. There were also quite a few Muslim women doing a fast walk, and some even jogging, dressed as they are always dressed, in long dresses or pants and a long coat over the top, plus headscarf of course. I can’t imagine trying to be sporty wearing so many clothes. They must be sweating and so very hot in there. Hats off to them. That’s sporting dedication for sure.

After my short 6km run I took a few photos with my phone, trying to capture the feeling of so much green and water. This is the best I can do. It makes me feel peaceful – always a good thing.

The rest of my Sunday? I finished sewing a top that I want to take on vacation with me – photos tomorrow. And watched Pink Pop on tv. Why pay to go stand with 30,000 other sweaty sun burned people when you can sit on your couch and get a front seat view to (nearly all) the bands? Here’s a fun one we watched – “Boss Hog”, a band from Berlin who take Top 40 songs and transform them into Texas country-rock, complete with the hats, boots and Texas accents. They were great fun! If you live in NL, tune in to channel Cultura 24 to watch it live, or watch it streaming on your computer on the 3voor12 site, or listen to it on national Radio 3 FM. Plenty of choices for choice music this weekend!

Church Music

Haarlem, music No Responses »

May 202012

Last night we went to de Grote of St.Bavokerk in the center of Haarlem to listen to music. This was not your typical church music.

The concert was set up at the foot of the very impressive pipe organ. The organ was built in 1738 and the web site states that it is the most pictured (photos, paintings) organ in the world. How do they know this?

The first half of the concert was Remy & friends. Unfortunately I didn’t get very good photos of them. Just Remy.

He had playing with him 2 violins and a cello. In the above photo he’s playing the piano but he spent most of his time playing keyboards and electronic gear. Unfortunately I didn’t take any video of his set. I liked it a lot, even better than the second half of the concert. He really used the string instruments to good effect and built beautiful soundscapes. Here’s a link to an article about the concert and you can hear some of the music if you play the video at the top.

The second half of the evening was by Ron Boots (keyboards) and other musicians who’s names I don’t know. There was a chorus also, but Ron played so loudly that you couldn’t hear the voices very well at all. It was mostly pretty shrill and too much 70′s electronica for my liking. I did make a video of them, which sounds pretty true to what we heard (amazingly nice sound from my camera). Don’t play the video expecting to SEE anything – it was very dark. It was the sound I was trying to capture. Here are some photos.

At the end, Remy joined this group and they improvised some music for us.

What surprised me was how old the audience was. When did we all get so old? I’m used to going to concerts where I’m one of the oldest people there. Not last night. When I was young, old people didn’t like electronic music. Old people liked orchestras or acoustic music. Last night the church was full of grey haired people, many even older than me, nodding their bald heads to loud music echoing through the big space. I couldn’t help trying to imagine what everyone looked like in 1973 listening to Tubular Bells for the first time.

Music on the Weekend

Haarlem, music, Traditions 1 Response »

May 062012

May 4th is Remembrance Day, commemorating fallen soldiers and civilians since WWII. May 5th is Liberation Day (Bevrijdingsdag) celebrating freedom from German occupation. On the 4th ceremonies take place all over the country. On the 5th it’s party time. Haarlem is famous for “Bevrijdingspop” (Liberation Pop), a free music festival that takes place all day.

On the 4th we went to North End music store where Dry the River played a set. This is an English band that’s touring at the moment. I took a video of one of their songs, which you can see here. Here are a couple of photos.

Their music is folky and easy and their harmonies are fantastic. Maybe the style gets a little monotonous but that could also be because it was completely unplugged. Maybe they do more with a larger venue. No matter. It’s great to see bands playing in a record store – up close and personal!

On the 5th we headed to Bevrijdingspop. The weather was luckily dry, but cloudy and cold. Really. Cold. We didn’t stay as long as we had planned, mainly due to the cold and also because there weren’t many places to sit and hang out. In the cold. Here’s what we did see:

The main stage area – Spin Vis playing